ABSTRACT
Mitigation is a well-recognized communication strategy that occurs when speakers use linguistic and non-linguistic devices to reduce, soften, or weaken an utterance. This chapter addresses fundamental theories and concepts related to mitigation, including politeness, speech acts, and illocutionary force. It also provides examples of mitigation in Spanish considering individual linguistic structures and a taxonomy of mitigating functions. Furthermore, this chapter considers current and prominent themes of Spanish pragmatics mitigation research, including pragmatic variation and mitigation, motivations of mitigation, prosody and mitigation, and second language learners and mitigation. Based on the review of literature, methodological considerations and critiques are provided, as well as directions for future research.
